Even as a baseball fan, it can be terribly difficult to figure out what “old school baseball” means. It’s even tough to understand when the “old” in old school is supposed to be.

Those who use the term when describing something in the sport never give much of a definition; they’re more going on that ancient, faulty judicial definition of pornography: They know it when they see it. Or, in this case, when they don’t.

Because in the world of baseball, nothing is better than being old school, and nothing is worse than not being old school. Even if no one has any idea what “old school” means. Actually, people know what it means. It means “something that’s not happening this very second.” I doubt that’s what those who use it have in mind, though.

Take the first meeting between Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Cole Hamels and 19-year-old Washington Nationals rookie outfielder Bryce Harper. To recap, Hamels threw a baseball at Harper, in just his second week in the majors, and then Hamels admitted it afterward.

Why?

“That’s something I grew up watching,” Hamels said, “I’m just trying to continue the old baseball because I think some people are kind of getting away from it. I remember when I was a rookie the strike zone was really, really small and you didn’t say anything because that’s the way baseball is. But I think unfortunately the league’s protecting certain players and making it not that old school, prestigious way of baseball. It’s just, ‘Welcome to the big leagues.’ ”

This doesn’t make a lot of sense. How does the strike zone when Cole Hamels was a rookie have anything to do with Bryce Harper? How is the league “protecting” Bryce Harper? (He’d been in the league a week.) And what is Cole Hamels talking about with this “something I grew up watching”? Cole Hamels is 28 years old; he grew up watching Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco and all those players everyone has spent the last decade screaming on television about being the opposite of “old school.” Did he have a dream that he grew up watching different players?

I would have loved to have seen the reaction of sportswriters surrounding Hamels had he said, “That’s something I grew up watching. I’m just trying to continue the old baseball, guys like Barry Bonds, Jason Giambi, Juan Gonzalez, Rafael Palmeiro, those sort of guys.”

But the craziest thing about Hamels’ notion was that “old school” was somehow prestigious. Baseball—always, now, then and forever—is the furthest thing from prestigious. Baseball has been a sport for scoundrels and rapscallions; this is why it’s fun.

In Sporting News magazine, a fan said baseball players were “a disreputable set of men, who made a practice of spending their money foolishly, and of saying and doing things on the ball field that were decidedly objectionable.” He said he had read in the papers of a number of acts that had led him to believe that was the case, and that, “while formerly he had been an attendant at the games, that latterly he had lost his desire in that respect.”

That guy was saying baseball players aren’t what they used to be, that they’re no longer prestigious, that they’re not “old school.” That account was published in 1894.

See, there is no “old school.” There are just cranky people stomping their feet and banging their fists that, darn it, the world just isn’t like it used to be. But the way it used to be isn’t the way it ever was. (Cole Hamels needs better access to the Sporting News archive, if you ask me.)

FROM SI.COM

The funny part about this is that I can’t think of a more old school player—in the way I think Hamels was trying to define it—than Bryce Harper. I interviewed Harper earlier this year, and all he could talk about was how much he admired—and patterned every aspect of his game around—guys like Pete Rose and Ty Cobb. Harper is one of those guys who plays every game like it’s his last, who dives and spits and knocks over catchers and loves baseball in a profound, aggressive way.

His favorite play?

“When I get to hit somebody,” he said. He’s an ornery cuss, precisely like the type of players we generally think of when we imagine old school baseball. (Certainly a lot more than pretty boy Hamels.)

When you’re talking about baseball history, you’re talking about tons of guys like Harper: Hypertalented guys who just wanted to knock your block off. I don’t know if that’s old school baseball; I don’t know what old school baseball is. But I know I like it. And I know you do too.